Profile: Teresa Maughan

“Why am I a magazine publisher? Is it because I love magazines?
No. It’s because I had a tiny success back in 1967 selling a hippy magazine on London’s fashionable King’s Road.” —Felix Dennis

T'zer: The YS years

Long before Felix Dennis struck magazine gold with Maxim, Dennis Publishing was known as Sportscene Specialist Press, and as the kung-fu fad of the 1970s passed home computers were going to be the next big thing. One of the many titles Dennis launched in that period was called Your Spectrum, a magazine dedicated to an 8-bit computer designed in Cambridge, England and made in Scotland.

Possibly the longest serving YS staffer, Teresa Maughan, known as T’zer, rose through the ranks to become production, then deputy editor under Kevin Cox. Kevin had taken over editorship from Roger Munford in 1985 and oversaw the relaunch as Your Sinclair.

“He’s a transvestite and likes to be known as Kylie to his friends,” she alleges.

In 1987 she took over from Kevin and remained editor until 1989 when she became YS publisher.

“In reality I did anything and everything,” she says.

Her abiding memories of YS are “laughing like a drain for four years solid, listening to Snouty and Berkmann swap jokes continuously—some of them were actually funny, dressing up in ridiculous outfits in the name of work, young boys asking me to sign their T-shirts (and other things!) at the Earl’s Court games shows—I could never understand why, as I didn’t feel famous, wondering whether Duncan MacDonald was going to show up for work or whether he was out on one of his ‘jaunts’. and Hold My Hand Very Tightly—nobody croons like David Wilson.”

Since leaving YS, she has had three children, born in 1993, 1995 and 2000 and continued her career in journalism. This has included editing Dennis’s Mohammed Ali: The Glory Years, a stint of production on Linux User magazine, and launching and packaging the now forgotten Star Pets Magazine.

“It was aimed at girls and all about celebrities and their pets and pop,” she recalls.

She has written extensively for the teen market from a series of unofficial pop biographies to more serious titles for Channel 4 Books including Model Behaviour, and four self-help books to accopmany the award-winning Wise Up Sunday morning show for teens. Her favourite ZX Spectrum game of all time is the unreleased Prince of Persia. “I loved the way he moved. Otherwise it has to be Advanced Lawnmower Simulator designed by Duncan MacDonald.”